Inbox

By DON McALLISTER

Welcome to InBox, where we attempt to answer your internet questions.

* "Sparkles" wants the web address for a site we mentioned in Inbox some time ago which had a viewer for PowerPoint files.

The site has disappeared, Sparkles, so try this Microsoft page. It links to Microsoft Office viewers and converters.

* John is confused when using search engines: placing a plus between two words in brackets, or having parentheses around words to make a phrase, does not always produce a different result.

See today's feature story, John. It depends on the search engine you use. Google, for example, will accept a quoted phrase and produce exact matches, whereas Dogpile produces exact quote matches and partial component matches.

As for the plus symbol, many search engines use this to separate words, so it's not the ideal symbol to use between words because the search engine may misinterpret your request.

* Farquhar suspects his internet provider is disconnecting him when he sits idle for 10 minutes while browsing a web page.

Internet providers do not disconnect that quickly, Farquhar. If they do have this type of rule, it will be implemented after several hours of inactivity, not minutes.

It's more likely that your computer dialup is set to disconnect after 10 minutes of inactivity. The offending setting is in Internet Explorer's Tools/Internet options/Connections/Settings/Advanced. Remove the tick beside "Disconnect if idle for".

* Bryan's Compaq bursts to life as soon as the phone rings, even when it is off.

There will be a "wake on modem" (Wom) setting in your Bios settings, Bryan. You'll have to disable it to stop this happening. Hitting F10 when it beeps on power-up reaches the Compaq Bios setup menu.

* "How can I configure my PC to immediately open up and view my Inbox of Outlook Express 5 when I first switch on?" asks Alan.

Place a shortcut to Outlook Express in the Start-up folder in your Start menu, Alan. In Windows 98 or later, you can drag the shortcut (hold the mouse button down through the whole process) from the desktop to the start button, slide it to Programs, then Start-up, and drop it in.

Links

Google

Dogpile

* If there's anything you want to know about the exciting world of the web, just e-mail inbox@nzherald.co.nz.